In-Home Care for Jacksonville Beach, on Both Sides of the Intracoastal

The City of Jacksonville’s Bennie Furlong Beaches Senior Center is at 281 19th Avenue South, about four minutes by car from City Hall, open weekdays, with a ceramics room, a computer lab, an exercise room, a billiards table and a piano. The city’s senior centers are free to attend for people 60 and older (some classes carry a small fee), serve a hot midday meal on weekdays, and offer free weekday rides to and from the centers; call the center for details. The Beaches Council on Aging, a nonprofit formed in 1975, works from 3410 3rd Street South. Its Dial-a-Ride vans, (904) 246-1477, carry seniors and adults with disabilities through the beach neighborhoods east of the Intracoastal, and its Beaches Senior Network coordinator connects families with help on home repair, food, legal questions and Medicare. Across all of Duval County, including the 32250 homes west of the waterway, JTA’s Connexion offers shared rides for people with disabilities who cannot use the regular buses, booked at least a day ahead, and a personal care attendant traveling with an ADA-certified rider rides free. ElderSource, the Area Agency on Aging for Northeast Florida, answers its HelpLine at 1-888-242-4464 on weekdays for home-delivered meals, personal care and homemaking programs, and caregiver support.

A senior center or a van ride only works if your parent is ready at the door, steady on the steps and willing to go. Companion care is how a weekly lunch at Bennie Furlong becomes a habit: a caregiver helps your parent get ready, drives them or waits with them for the Dial-a-Ride van, and is there when they get home. For a parent with memory loss, Alzheimer’s and dementia care keeps the same routine going on the days in between, and for someone living with Parkinson’s, Parkinson’s care plans outings around medication reminders and the hours when moving is easiest. Every caregiver we send is screened, background-checked, trained and insured.

Jacksonville Beach’s own evacuation plan is plain about the risk. When a hurricane of any category from 1 to 5 is expected to make landfall, the city’s entire civilian population is to be evacuated, on orders from the Mayor of Jacksonville, and traffic over the Intracoastal bridges stops once sustained winds at the top of a bridge reach 40 miles per hour for a minute. There are no public hurricane shelters at the beaches. For anyone without a ride, JTA’s 2026 hurricane guide names two pick-up points at the beaches, Jacksonville Beach Elementary at 315 South 10th Street and Fletcher High School at 700 Seagate Avenue in Neptune Beach, and buses marked “Evacuation Shuttle” also run on regular routes until a cut-off time; riders change buses at a transfer center on the way to a public shelter. North of Beach Boulevard, the city’s route out is west on Beach Boulevard to the Hart Bridge Expressway and I-95; south of it, west on J. Turner Butler Boulevard to I-95. Duval County’s evacuation zones run from A to F, and Zone A, including manufactured and mobile homes, is the first to go, which matters for the 32250 homes west of the waterway as much as for the beach. The coast has the record to show why: Hurricane Matthew tore away the last 300 feet of the 1,300-foot Jacksonville Beach Pier in 2016, Irma did more damage the next year, and the pier, closed entirely in 2019 for rebuilding and raised eight feet against storm surge, reopened in July 2022.

Anyone who depends on electricity for oxygen or other medical equipment, has trouble getting around, or lives with dementia should be on Duval County’s Special Medical Needs Registry, which is free at JaxReady.com/SpecialMedicalNeeds or (904) 255-3172. It has to be renewed every year, and registering does not automatically qualify anyone for a special needs shelter, since Florida Department of Health medical staff review each application; once an evacuation is ordered, JTA provides transportation for registered residents to a designated shelter. With an early evacuation and closed bridges in the plan, settle where your parent will go, and who goes with them, before a storm has a name. With live-in care, someone is already in the house when a watch is posted, gathering medications, chargers and paperwork and getting your parent off the island early. Coming back, re-entry can come in phases and needs a driver’s license with a Jacksonville Beach address or another proof of residency, such as a utility bill; extra hourly care shifts after a storm mean someone checks that the refrigerator is cold, the medications are dry and your parent is eating. We also serve Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach to the north and Ponte Vedra Beach and Sawgrass to the south; find every ZIP code on our Ponte Vedra service areas page.